When private landholders in Balocola village, near here, refused to allow local residents to take the body of Parvathiammal (86) to be interred at a cemetery in the area on Tuesday, they decided to voice their protest by refusing to move the body from the area.
They stood guard over the remains for over two hours till the police arrived, and forced the landholders to give way.
Action needed
Now, the residents of Mahalinga Nagar in Kundah taluk, who along with people in Balocola Village have been using a half-acre plot to bury the dead, wants the district administration to ensure that no one in the area has to suffer the ignominy of not being allowed to bury the dead.
R. Udhayakumar, a resident of the area, said that local residents had been using a different burial site near Kathadimattam till 2002.
With the number of buildings on the increase, and with agriculture lands also growing, the cemetery became too small, and the district administration themselves had set aside the new plot of land to be used as a burial ground.
“We have buried 25 people in this place, and over the last few years, the people who are cultivating crops in the land surrounding the cemetery have refused us passage to carry the dead,” said Mr. Udhayakumar.
Local residents claim that while most of the land owners do not object to them getting to the burial ground crossing their farms and private property, a few people, alleged to be encroaching on revenue land in the area, were blocking the small pathway leading to the cemetery. On Tuesday, the police asked the landholders to allow the body to be carried to the cemetery.
Local residents have now asked for a permanent solution to the problem.
The 60 families in the area are ready to pay for access to the cemetery.
